Effects of laterality and pitch height of an auditory accessory stimulus on horizontal response selection: The Simon effect and the SMARC effect

Abstract

In the present article, we investigated the effects of pitch height and the presented ear (laterality) of an auditory stimulus, irrelevant to the ongoing visual task, on horizontal response selection. Performance was better when the response and the stimulated ear spatially corresponded (Simon effect), and when the spatial—musical association of response codes (SMARC) correspondence was maintained—that is, right (left) response with a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone. These findings reveal an automatic activation of spatially and musically associated responses by task-irrelevant auditory accessory stimuli. Pitch height is strong enough to influence the horizontal responses despite modality differences with task target.

The present study was supported by Grant 18-10669 from the Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists to A.N., and by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research 17330152 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science awarded to K.Y. A.N. is now at Tohoku University